Rumors circulating that Novell is going to kill off its popular Linux desktop lines are completely false. [However,] Novell is making one large strategic change. The GNOME interface is going to become the default interface on both the SLES and Novell Linux Desktop line. KDE libraries will be supplied on both, but the bulk of Novell's interface moving forward will be on GNOME. "The entire KDE graphical interface and product family will continue to be supported and delivered on OpenSuSE."

I think the point is that it would allow people to write applications that look nice alongside the Desktop Environment without paying through the noze for the right toolkit. However I don't think GTK is the right toolkit for something like KDE, if anything a new toolkit should be made by the KDE developers if they have the manpower and resources for that. Then the new toolkit should be released under the GNU LGPL so people can actually afford to make a living writing software with that toolkit.